


Echoes

by HighKingMargo



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 07:22:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17545247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HighKingMargo/pseuds/HighKingMargo
Summary: Margo confronts her new feelings for Kady/Sam after recovering her memories.





	Echoes

Margo. Her name was Margo Hanson. Her memories—her real memories—entwined with those she’d had just hours ago, appending but not rewriting. Her name was High King Margo Hanson the Destroyer, not Janet Pluchinsky the fashion editor.

And Sam Cunningham was still Sam Cunningham, not Kady Orloff-Diaz. She squinted at Margo and looked her up and down, her eyes lingering on the eyepatch in her hand.

“…Janet?”

Margo nodded.

Sam let her breath out and pulled her into a hug. “We were so worried; you just fucking disappeared off the face of the earth.” She pulled back. “What happened? Is this…you? The real you?”

“Yeah, it is,” Margo said. “You were worried? We barely know each other.” You don’t actually know me at all, she thought. Not right now. You don’t even know yourself.

But then, Margo hadn’t lost her memories of being Janet. She remembered perfectly well how quickly she’d taken to Sam, how, despite having just met each other, Sam had made her feel safe and protected and less lonely than she’d ever been in her life.

In Janet’s life.

She had to keep reminding herself that she hadn’t really lived it, that any memories she had beyond a couple months ago were entirely fabricated. Still, though, they felt real, and honestly, the loneliness wasn’t exclusive to that life. For the most part, Margo was just as lonely as Janet.

“Yeah, well. We’re in an entirely unique situation,” Sam said. “That tends to bring people together.”

“Yeah, I guess it does,” Margo said. “As for what happened, the clone of a dead god from a parallel universe pulled me into said universe, and the people there fixed my identity. Because I’m their king, and they need me to fix their shit.”

Sam blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Yeah, crazy, I know,” Margo said. “I’d go into more detail, but I don’t have the patience and it’ll be faster to just get you guys all fixed up too. Have you found anyone else since I’ve been gone?”

Sam shook her head. No,” she said, “it’s only been a couple days; we haven’t managed to track anyone down. And Marina hasn’t really made any progress getting through whatever’s blocking us, either.”

“Okay, that’s fine,” Margo said. “It’s fine. We can find the others; I just need you back to help me. The real you.”

“Janet—”

“It’s Margo, actually.”

Sam reached out and squeezed Margo’s shoulder. “Margo,” she said. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

Margo stared up at her, at the face both familiar and unfamiliar, and she could tell Sam meant it. Maybe Kady wouldn’t have, had she been herself and had she known who Margo really was—they never had gotten along particularly well—but Sam wanted nothing more in that moment than to soothe her. Tears prickled in Margo’s eyes.

“They’re my friends,” she whispered. “And yours. Quentin, Julia…Eliot. And they’re missing. They aren’t supposed to be missing.”

Sam brushed Margo’s hair away from her face and gently moved her thumb over her cheek to wipe a tear away. “We were—are—pretty close, aren’t we? All of us?”

Some of us, Margo thought, but she nodded. There was no point in telling the truth and driving her away when her real memories would do it soon enough. Sam slid her hands down Margo’s arms and took her hands in her own, and Margo tried to see through Sam’s face to Kady’s. They looked similar in a way: the strong jawline, the sharp eyes. She could even imagine the words in Kady’s voice. Maybe this is what Kady would have been like if she’d had a better life, and maybe Janet was what Margo would have been like if she’d had one herself.

“Well,” Sam said, snapping her out of it, “everyone’s in the other room. We can get them and head over to…where are we going?”

“Fillory.”

 

* * *

 

Margo watched as the glamour lifted first from Penny, then Josh, then Kady. They blinked and glanced around as if waking from a dream.

“Wow,” Josh said. “Just…wow.”

“Holy shit.” Kady yanked her hair out of its bun and ran her fingers through it to shake it out. “God, how long were we under that fucking spell? I can’t even tell.”

“A couple months, I think,” Margo said. “Good news is I doubt they were expecting us to break out of it. Ever. So we should be able to fly under the radar for a while. Bad news is half our posse is gone, so if we can go find them now, that would be great; I have a country with a year’s worth of problems to solve and our own world is getting double-tapped by the Library and that McAllistair bitch. We need a plan, stat.”

“Right,” Penny said. “I swear to god, if this timeline gets to be as fucked as mine…”

Kady’s eyes lingered on Penny for a moment before flicking up to meet Margo’s. She looked away and made for the door.

“Let’s get back to the portal.”

It was a longer trip than Margo would have liked; even in the carriages, it took a good hour to get there, and she wanted to busy herself as much as possible. She had to scrub Janet out of her mind; Janet wasn’t real, but her missing friends were, and Fillory was, and the things that happened while she thought she was Janet didn’t matter.

Those things would have been easier to ignore if Kady hadn’t climbed into her carriage and forced Penny and Josh together into the other one. Margo folded her hands in her lap and looked out the window as the horses lurched forward, drawing them away from Castle Whitespire.

“Can we talk?”

Margo reluctantly turned back toward Kady. “About?”

“Okay,” Kady said, “I know this is really fucking weird. I don’t know how to talk about it either, but…You know, you feel it too, right? That life?”

Margo sighed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you remember being Janet, don’t you? Every little thing, like you really lived it.”

“Those memories are fake.”

“They feel real, though,” Kady said. “The personality, too. I feel like I’m…” Kady shook her head and crossed her arms. “It’s stupid. I feel like I’m still her, a little bit. Sam.”

Margo nodded slowly. “Yeah,” she said, “I know what you mean.”

“Listen,” Kady said. “Those things you said to me, right before we left to come here? I’ve never seen you that vulnerable before, and—”

“Janet can keep the vulnerability,” Margo said. “It was a slip. I can’t afford to be vulnerable right now.”

“You slipped because I was still Sam,” Kady said. “I’m good at reading people, Margo, and I was even better at it as a detective. I know you’re worried about your image or whatever, and I won’t tell anyone, but I wanted you to know that if you ever need to talk…like that…you can come to me.”

Margo studied Kady’s face. “There’s no way you would have offered that before,” she said. “You’re as closed off as I am. You were.”

“Yeah,” Kady said, “I was. But like I said, that person they put inside me is still there. Do you know what I remember?”

Margo shook her head.

“I remember busting a twelve-year-old kid for heroin possession. I don’t know if he was real. But he cried the whole way to the station, and I could tell how scared he was. I sat him down next to me while my partner called his parents, and he held my hand and kept crying. And he said he did it because his dad always did it, and he wanted his attention, and he didn’t know he wouldn’t be able to stop. He asked me to help him stop.”

Kady paused and looked down at her hands clasped between her knees.

“I wrapped my arm around him and told him it would be okay, but I didn’t really know. I knew we would send him to drug counseling, and I knew it doesn’t always work. I knew we’d have to investigate his dad, take him away if we found anything. He fell asleep on me waiting for his mom to come and hugged me before they took him away.

And the worst part is that it wasn’t unusual. It happened so many times, and I…I had to have a soft heart to do that. I had to believe those kids would get better and lead full lives. So yeah, I was a closed-off person. I still am, I think. But I can’t remember things like that and pretend I don’t want to help people.”

“Jesus,” Margo murmured. “Well, now I feel like a shitty person; all I remember is spitting on people to get what I wanted. I guess I wasn’t all that different no matter which name I was using.”

“My point is,” Kady said, “I’m here for you if you want.”

Margo nodded and tried to wipe tears out of her eyes before Kady could notice. “There aren’t many things I really love,” she said quietly. “Both of those things are people, and now they’re just…gone. If anything happened to them—Fuck, they’ve scared me before, and every single time I lose my mind thinking I’ll have to keep going without them, and I don’t know how. I really don’t. But we were brainwashed for so long, who knows whether they’re okay.”

“See?” Kady smiled softly. “You’re not a shitty person. You just care so much about the people who matter to you that you’d do anything to keep them safe, and when you don’t have those people, you have to keep yourself safe. I get it. What you are is strong.”

“You know, I’m not really sure I like you being able to read into me like this. I think you were better as the broody and silent type.”

Kady laughed and shrugged. “I’m only so good at it because I relate, but I can stop.”

“No,” Margo said, and the corners of her mouth twitched up. “It’s kind of hot in a scary sort of way.” She sighed. “You know, if we’re being totally transparent right now, I…well, I think I kind of had a thing for you. For Sam.”

“When you were Janet.”

“Well…after, too,” Margo said. “And I thought it would be a nonissue once you got your memories back; I mean, we never really talked before, and sure, I thought you were hot and powerful, but I was also pretty sure you didn’t exactly think of me as a friend. Not that I’d blame you.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I have feelings for you, all right?” Margo said. “It’s gross; I’m used to sex-only relationships. But something about you just…” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Something about you makes me feel safe. And protected. Cared for.”

Kady stared at her for a moment, and Margo couldn’t place the look in her eyes. Then, she leaned across the carriage aisle and kissed her, balancing herself with her hand on Margo’s knee. It wasn’t anything Margo had ever experienced before; it wasn’t hot and breathy and full of lust and desire. It was meaningful.

Kady pulled away for a moment, as if she hadn’t realized what she was doing, and then they met again in the middle. This was what Margo knew how to do. This was a kiss full of lust and desire, but backed by the previous one, and it made her chest ache with the weight of those feelings.

Maybe, Margo thought, this wouldn’t be too bad. Maybe, for once, she could have something real and good, and maybe she could give that to Kady too.


End file.
